Gabler: Pitt football history something to be proud of

Pitt football claims

Pitt football has won nine national championship in its history, but the Panthers’ biggest win in recent years may have been the 12-0 victory against Penn State in the last game played between the two rivals.

Pitt News File Photo

Pitt football claims nine national championships — eight of which the school probably won before the birth of most students’ parents.

The most recent national title for the Panthers was won in 1976 behind head coach Johnny Majors and Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett, and there’s no denying that the program has struggled to regain its status as a national powerhouse since the early 1980s.

The last time Pitt genuinely contended for a national championship was in 1981, when the then-No. 1 Panthers, led by three future NFL Hall of Famers — Dan Marino, Russ Grimm and Rickey Jackson — lost the final game of the regular season to rival Penn State, which eliminated the Panthers from title contention.

After Pitt stormed out to a 14-0 lead, the Nittany Lions scored 48 unanswered points to shock the nation’s top team, 48-14, at Pitt Stadium. That game is the opposite of the famous 13-9 contest — which was the score of the game in which the Panthers defeated their other rival, West Virginia, in 2007, knocking the Mountaineers out of the title game. We’ll get to that later.

But what has happened to Pitt football since 1981?

The team has accomplished only a single 10-win season — and that was in 2009.

In short, Pitt’s administration seemed to de-emphasize the football program after Coach Jackie Sherrill left for Texas A&M in 1982.

The 1990s were a huge growing period for college sports, and in that time, Pitt had one of the worst Division I teams and lost its foothold as a national power.

Coach Walt Harris took over the program in 1997 after the school seriously contemplated dropping football from the Division I level.

Thanks to several star players such as Kevan Barlow and Larry Fitzgerald, Harris managed to restore the program to a respectable level, and he even led Pitt to the Fiesta Bowl in 2005. The Panthers were crushed in that game, 35-7, by Urban Meyer’s Utah Utes, and the Panthers finished with an 8-4 record.

For current Pitt students, the two best Pitt seasons in their lifetimes were probably that 8-4 season, during which Pitt became the first BCS school to lose to a non-automatic qualifier, and the 10-3 season in 2009 that concluded with a win in the Meineke Car Care Bowl against North Carolina.

With all that said, life as a Pitt fan in recent years hasn’t been that bad.

In the last two decades of Pitt football, some of the best players in the nation have worn the old script blue and gold, and, more recently, after the school changed colors following Harris’ arrival, navy blue and Vegas gold.

Fitzgerald, Darrelle Revis and LeSean McCoy — probably the best wide receiver, cornerback and running back, respectively, in the NFL today — all played and excelled at Pitt. All three provided some of the greatest memories for Pitt since 2000.

Fitzgerald, who currently plays for the Arizona Cardinals, finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 2003 to Oklahoma’s Jason White, and most Pitt fans agree that “Fitz” should have become the second Panther to win the prestigious trophy.

Revis’ punt return for a touchdown against West Virginia in 2006 won ESPN’s College Football Play of the Year. Pitt lost the game, 45-27, but the video is always worth watching — if for nothing more than to see Derek Kinder’s (No. 81) block on two defenders to spring Revis, who now plays for the New York Jets.

If you just finished a fantasy football draft, I’m sure McCoy was near the top of your list. McCoy dominated the Big East in his two years at Pitt. Now a known NFL do-it-all commodity, McCoy stepped in to Pitt as a freshman ready to carry the load.

He will forever be most-known by Pitt fans for his heroics in the 2007 Backyard Brawl — the aforementioned game with West Virginia best known in Pitt circles as simply “13-9”. The Panthers were 28.5-point underdogs to the No. 2 Mountaineers, and the game was viewed by many as nothing more than a going away party for WVU, which was on track for its first national title. But McCoy had other ideas, carrying the ball 38 times for 148 yards and the game’s only touchdown.

All three of those players are on track for Hall of Fame careers and are looking to join Pitt’s eight other Pro Football Hall of Famers, a statistic that ranks third in the nation, behind only USC and Notre Dame and tied with Ohio State and Michigan.

Pittsburgh has always been a football town, and with the tradition that Pitt football has, Pitt will always be a football school. Not until a small period in the late 1980s and since 2000 has Pitt’s basketball squad been better than the football team.

The recent coaching carousel has put doubts about the future of the football program in the minds of some Pitt fans, but most remain forever optimistic.

Maybe new head coach Paul Chryst will be the next Majors or Sherrill. And if he’s not, maybe the next guy will be.

The tradition will always be there, the practice and playing facilities are there, and someday Pitt football will be back to the elite status that won the school nine national championships.

Or so we hope.